标签：#transparency

There is now a second free WSL management tool out there called WSL Dashboard , published by a developer who goes by owu on GitHub. It is open source, it has more GitHub stars than WSL UI, and it is clearly the product of real effort. I have no problem with any of that. Competition is good for users, and WSL deserves more than one good GUI. What I do have a problem with is this notice, which appears both on wslui.com and in the WSL Dashboard README: "This software is not distributed through the Microsoft Store. Any application listed there under the same name is unauthorized and may be counterfeit. Please do not download it to avoid potential scams." WSL UI is on the Microsoft Store. It has been since January. So that notice is, in plain terms, telling people that the genuine, certified, earlier WSL tool is a counterfeit scam. It isn't. And the entire claim falls apart the moment you look at the dates — all of which are public, timestamped, and independently verifiable. What this post is, and what it isn't This is not a "my project is better than yours" post. I'm not going to pick apart WSL Dashboard's features or pretend it's a bad piece of software. It isn't. This is a correction of one specific, factual claim: that the version of WSL UI on the Microsoft Store is unauthorized or counterfeit. That claim is demonstrably false, and because it's aimed at a tool people trust, it's worth setting straight properly — with evidence, not adjectives. The timeline Every date below comes from a public record. I've linked the sources so you don't have to take my word for any of it. Date Event How to verify 2008-12-11 octasoft.co.uk registered. Octasoft Ltd has existed for well over a decade. Nominet WHOIS for octasoft.co.uk 2025-12-14 The octasoft-ltd/wsl-ui repository is created. GitHub API ( created_at ) 2026-01-10 WSL UI's first public release, v0.2.0. WSL UI releases 2026-01-13 WSL UI v0.14.0 is published to the Microsoft Store. The announcement post 2026-01-18 The owu/wsl-